OSNews

>A mono article that preemtively addresses the issues
>that seem to plague the discussions on OSNews.

Hardly! The article does not address the fact that the ECMA standard may itself infringe on MS patents and that MS may impose licensing terms for the patented technology including royalties and/or licensing terms which are incompatible with the GPL or other OSS licenses.

It only repeats the "two stacks" fallacy that only serves to confuse the discussion.

Is IBM now offering indemnity against lawsuits for the MS technoloy in Mono?

> It only repeats the "two stacks" fallacy that only
> serves to confuse the discussion.

Actually, this is the way I see it:

1) The ECMA standard *might* have problems with patent licensing. Novell and friends have wagered that it doesn't and Miguel thinks that he can rewrite around any patent issue that happen to arise. RedHat and friends have wagered that it does have problems that cannot be worked around easily and is a afraid that even the threat of "patent issues" may hold back GNOME the way it held back BSD.

2) Using the Gtk# stack plus the ECMA standard will reduce your risk and work seemlessly on Linux/Unix, but since the Gtk# stack is not native to Windows, you'll gain no portability advantage over PyGtk++ or portable native UI support over Java/SWT or wxPython..

3) Using the WinForms/ASP.NET stack will decrease your porting time from Windows, but it will expose you to the more risk than (2) because Microsoft has not licensed patents to those parts. WinForms/ASP.NET apps might not also be directly portable to Linux (e.g. SharpDevelop has to be forked as a separate project (MonoDevelop), because SharpDevelop can't compile under Mono despite the desire to do so by the SharpDevelop team.)

4) Mono supporters believe that even if they have to abandon the "Windows" Stack, the "Gtk#" Stack presents several useful technologies that are not available anywhere else. Mono detractors believe that Mono provides little value that is no available in other languages/APIs.

5) Mono supporters believe that they can develop so much Mono software that they can play a part in defining the .NET standard and if they are wrong, the advantages of (4) will leave this point moot. Mono detractors believe that Microsoft.NET will always be the defactor standard and as a consequence Mono will always be playing catchup and will have little or no say in the .NET standard.

6) Mono supporters see Mono as another Samba -- Linux will always need it to survive in the corporate world. Mono detractors see Mono as another WINE -- WINE may have some uses as a transitional technology to move off of Windows, but it's generally a bad idea to write new apps using WineLib (e.g. Corel Office) and if possible native apps should be used over WineLib apps.

Have I missed anything?

>Have I missed anything?

Just that MS has a fairly broad patent application for .NET.

See http://news.com.com/2100-1001-984052.html -- ".Net patent could stifle standards effort"

If this patent is approved, I'd like to see how Miguel could "rewrite around" it.

Most software patents are flawed and unenforcable and when challenged in court the majority dont stand up.

Broad patents are especially vulnerable to being overruled in a court as its one of the main things a judge will take into account.

Lastly, anti-monoopoly laws prohibit a monopolist from using patents to stifle legitimate competition so MS's entire patent haul is totally worthless (whilst they remain a monopolist of course).

Additional : in the EU and generally outside the US software patents are worthless and unenforcable period.

"...is a afraid that even the threat of "patent issues" may hold back GNOME the way it held back BSD."
There are no patent issues that has held back the BSD's.

yeah, 'ere we go again...

Why is .NET dead?

Im sure is not dead but surely I haven't had the inpact that should.

The Halo effect of promoting .NET 2 more than 2 years before its release had left many developers in doubs about waithing for 2.0 or start programing with 1.1.

It would be interesting if you could be bothered to explain your statement that .NET is pretty much dead.

I can't see a single sign of it being "Pretty much dead" much less of it dying... It's actually growing as far as I can tell.

Hey lads, this thread is for flaming/praising mono not KDE/GNOME. So would you be so kind to keep it on topic please.

I can no other words to call you, than troll. I mean, this topic is about a Mono related article, and then, we first get a troll complaining about Mono an that Havoc and rh thing. Second, and worst of all, we get a second troll -you-, which comes to comment a stupid thing.

If you like KDE, that's great. If you don't like Gnome, that great. But please, if you are smart enough, don't come with comments like that in this topic. I'm very sure you could find otehr site with people trolling about Gnome vs Kde or Mono vs Java.

The fact is: I don't see the point about complaining about Gnome in a Mono article topic, where you could complain about the article. Go and read the old Mono related to get a view and stop flaming about things we have commented 1000 times.

I have looked at XPCOM and let me tell you the c bindings were horrific and made Corba look nice. GObject is a far better common object system especially when full introspection gets added as you will be able to do everything that XPCOM can do.

But please, don't tell me about KDE code quality!

You might not want to hear it, but you're being told.

Did it ever occured to you, why the biggest/best/most-advanced Linux applications we have are written in G-technologies? (GObject, Gtk, GStreamer, Glib) This is solely because the G-API is superior to Qt/Kde API and developers are smart enough to see that.

Pardon? Glib and everything that surrounds it is an absolute pile of junk for programmers - a necessary evil sometimes, but junk nontheless. In terms of the desktop you need the power of natively compiled code and the ability to do rather low level things (you can't run a whole desktop in a VM I'm afraid), but with the object-oriented power of C++, a development toolkit and higher level attributes that actually allow you to do things rather than debugging your own development tools.

As KDE 4 comes around (and other desktops get left behind) the non-political, straightforward reasons why KDE chose to use Qt will become very, very visible, and we'll start to see some people get ever more uncomfortable.

Hint: Mono and mono-enabled applications are (likely) already a part of your Linux distribution. You clearly missed the moment they killed Kennedy.

The primary applications that use Mono are a desktop search tool with Lucene re-written in C#, and an application to arrange your photos that everyone treats as the second coming that isn't really a patch on something like Digikam. *sarcasm*Yer, Mono is really rocking my world*/sarcasm*. Mono applications are certainly in my distribution, somewhere, but I'm not using them much (there actually aren't that many, and they consume an absolutely incredible amount of memory). I can really see why Novell is investing all that money and people are so excited :-).

The supposed productivity benefits of .Net are certainly not translating into better applications either. Well, that is a more crucial area for Gnome but it isn't in certain other desktops. They have better development tools already ;-).

Glib and everything that surrounds it is an absolute pile of junk for programmers - a necessary evil sometimes, but junk nontheless. In terms of the desktop you need the power of natively compiled code and the ability to do rather low level things (you can't run a whole desktop in a VM I'm afraid)

Please learn something before you open your mouth. Glib is written in pure C.

From gtk.org:
GLib is the low-level core library that forms the basis of GTK+ and GNOME.

Please learn something before you open your mouth. Glib is written in pure C.

Wow, really?! And what's that got to do with my comment? That comment was directed at Mono, and to an extent Java, (hence the 'in terms of the desktop...' bit) because that's what people are looking to develop applications and desktop infrastructure in - otherwise, what's the point?! That's why people are looking to use stuff like Mono, because stuff like Glib are just simply not condusive to developing applications.

Can you think about what someone is writing before opening your mouth?

Did it ever occured to you, why the biggest/best/most-advanced Linux applications we have are written in G-technologies? (GObject, Gtk, GStreamer, Glib) This is solely because the G-API is superior to Qt/Kde API and developers are smart enough to see that.

Ah yes, of course. I guess you have names, numbers and evidences for backing that up. And nothing has to do with the LGPL, right?

You are dead right - it can only benefit linux to have better RAD tools (irrespective of whether you are completley paranoid about non-existant legal issues).

It also harms MS for Linux to have these tools but more importantly Linux has always been about choice so yeah its cool to have so many languages to choose from.

Whilst I have a problem with the mono bloat being in Gnome core, I really do hope people will wake up and see that mono can only be good for Linux in general.

Tell me this, what RAD ability is there for Mono? Is there a form builder a la VB? Is there a usable debugger? Good refactoring tools?

I've heard this argument of RAD before, but I have found no tools to backup such a claim.

Monodevelop is under construction, they want to create ASP.NET and GTK# form designer. Until you can create your app under Visual Studio and port the code to linux via mono.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man_argument

Mr Troll, you seem to be just a kid. Grew up, and bring better reasons -and explain them- please.

SPARC might be supported, but there's no binary for it yet (at least there doesn't seem to be a link to one). I think that's what the author was trying to say.

Miguel, since you are reading this (and offering corrections to the article), why don't you address these issues?

And preemptively, no your mono FAQ does not address these issues.

The problem I have with the arguments that people make against Mono is that they're all hypothetical. The whole argument is "What if Microsoft sometime in the distant future does..."?

It's like the Open Source communities drive to have an Open Source implementation of Java. When you ask why, the whole argument is "Sure, Java is free now (as in free beer), but what if in the future Sun decides to..."?

It's all based on some hypothetical situation that may never happen.

If only I could get a penny every time somebody mentioned Seth's blog post in a mono related article then I would be a rich man!

"If only I could get a penny every time somebody mentioned Seth's blog post in a mono related article then I would be a rich man!"

If only I could have a million dollars for every time someone convincingly refuted Seth's blog post in a mono related article, then I would be a rich man! Wait, no, I wouldn't.

If you think you are smart enough, then please bring the entire discussion links. Bringing Seth's comments only, doesn't help at all. Or maybe you didn't even try to read the responses from Mono community?

the responses from the mono community (for the most part) is that redhat are zealots/pawns of sun. their response to the ecma royalties thing is that a ms engineer posted an email on some mailing list saying they wouldnt. given the history of microsoft when dealing with their competition, even if ms lawyers came out and said that they would never charge royalties, people should still be warey. hell, we have yet to hear novells lawyers say that its all good, let alone ms. really, all we have is miguel saying "dont worry about it".

as for patent infringement, there are cute diagrams about what is under microsoft patent, and what is under ECMA, again not mentioning that even the ECMA stuff can be used against us. ECMA allows the company to retain IP ownership, it isnt the same thing as ANSI, and the response has been "well, its a standard".

the reason the seth post comes up again and again is that we have yet to see a miguel post that addresses the points he brings up. he tends to say that redhats refusal to adopt mono is plain old anti-microsoft hatred, that .net is really good tech, and everyone nods sagely, because everyone knows how zealotous those free software nuts are. this bugs me, seth has a very good argument that not only has yet to be addressed, but is dismissed left right and center.

dont get me wrong, im a big fan of .net, i feel its java++ (or will be eventually once the platform matures more), and that mono itself is an extremely impressive accomplishment. i have nothing but respect for miguel, anyone who will take an interview at ms as a platform to evangelise free software will become a geek hero to me, for that reason alone. my problem isnt with mono, its with the dismissal of perfectly lucid and valid arguments as "Zealotous", and being ignored.

So IMHO .NET != Mono.

What abt.
.NET > Mono or
.NET < Mono

It is hard to say if Mono < or > then .NET, since it is a subset and a superset all at once.
(sortof like java = c++--++)

You could run everything that runs on Mono by installing all needed libs on .NET, but few people are going to do that and those that do will probably bee Gnome/Mono guys anyway. You can't get all of .NET running on Mono since Microsoft isn't porting and Mono isn't implementing it.

You just have two separate cultures that share a technological subset to further their own agenda.

>you have no power to stop anybody from using or
>programming in Mono.

No, but we can make sure people are aware of the risk so they make an informed decision.

And yes, you will see this discussion come up in every mono-related article until Miguel or someone else at Novell addresses these issues.

Mono adoption is growing, you are right. But why do you gloat over this fact? Seriously, please, tell me why I am wrong to be concerned over mono and the unresolved RAND licensing issues and I will be more than happy to use mono.

Really, mono and .net look fantastic and could do wonders for gnome development. However, as is, using mono is just not worth it.

Until you refute this, which you have not even tried to do (only call people zealots and tell them to shut up), you are very misguided for gloating over mono's successes and redhat's failures.

And, even though mono adoption has increased, it is still largely shunned:

Gnome officially does not allow mono in the core libs. Redhat and most other distros are also refusing to include it. Very few really nice apps have been done in mono. Monodevelop is junk. Sorry. Beagle just doesn't really work day in and day out. Smaller apps like Muine are nice but are hardly enabled by C#. They could have been easily done in another language and in fact there are still many many more new apps in languages other than mono than in mono.

Seriously people like you who dismiss legitimate arguments and concerns with mocking and insults and no actual rebuttal make me sick.

Really, no kidding, you are my definition of an ass hole.

Monodevelop is a junky fork of sharpdevelop